One of the saddest headlines you’ll ever read.
But it’s true.
A new study, published in The Journal of the Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, used 20 years worth of research to show that preschoolers (ages 3-6) were more than 6x likelier to express a desire to kill themselves and 8x likelier to actually try by 12 years old than preschoolers who didn’t show signs of depression.
That’s an enormously sad paragraph to write and even read.
Now I know that many skeptics will say, “Come on, you can’t say a preschoolers has depression!”
But you absolutely can.
We know, of course, that developing depression involves both a genetic and environmental component (among other things), and that young kids are therefore at risk.
And, in fact, when you look at how the preschoolers were earmarked for depression in the study, you can see the signs pretty easily.
Writing for Medical Xpress, Kristina Sauerwein notes these preschoolers were more likely to appear joyless, be self-critical, have trouble regulating their moods and emotions, and also – seemed to have “an advanced understanding of death.”
In case folks are still skeptical, even bran scans saw processes indicative of depression.
In prior studies, [Dr. Joan] Luby and [Dr. Deanna] Barch conducted brain scans on preschoolers with depression and found alterations in brain development, compared with their peers who did not suffer from depression. Their gray matter—tissue that contains brain cells and processes signals involved in seeing, hearing, memory, decision-making and emotion—is lower in volume and thinner across the cortex, potentially contributing to challenges with mood and emotion regulation.
So yes, this is a real thing. This is an unbelievably sad thing. This needs to be addressed.
Just as a personal anecdote, I absolutely felt deep depression as young as age five.
I wasn’t afraid of monsters under my bunk bed, I was afraid of death, the enormity of life itself (even the good things), so overwhelmed by the juxtaposition of the two that I didn’t know how I could last much longer than another five years.
Muse wasn’t even a band yet, but I felt so keenly, then, the words they sing in “Explorers“: “Free me, free me, free me from this world. I don’t belong here. It was a mistake, imprisoning my soul. Can you free me, free me from this world?”
Each night ended with the same refrain, a bad dream before the bad dream.
And I had wonderful parents and a good life! I was just a kid with depression. Who hid it very well.
I suspect that there are many such kids, particularly in the church, because there’s such an emphasis on behavioral control (“don’t yell, don’t throw a tantrum, don’t be angry” etc) and these behaviors are often symptoms of the emotional dysregulation that’s consistent with depression.
Recently, I came across a gathering of Christians and the kids were all “well-behaved” and yet I wondered, “which is the child, dutifully staying quiet while his elders speak, saying ‘thank you’ when he’s offered something he doesn’t like, smiling because it reflects joy, but on the inside, is actually crying and screaming because they’re sad, and because they can’t cry and scream when they feel like it at home because their parents expect adult behavior from a child who simply doesn’t have the brain development to be an adult yet?”
We simply have to let our kids express their emotions and can’t Proverbs them into being perfect, little human beings.
We have to let them be angry, “disrespectful” to us, we have to let them feel the passion God gave them, and love and hold them through it.
I once heard one of my favorite child development experts say that as long as little kids are expressing their emotions, they’re saying, “I feel safe with you. I feel safe enough to say I’m angry. I feel safe enough that I won’t be punished or in trouble for feeling a certain way.”
Emotional safeness and love go hand-in-hand (I love this article on why it’s so important to teach our kids about their feelings and let them express them).
There are spiritual implications too.
Kids need to know they can “behave badly” and still be infinitely loved. They need to see our unconditional love in order to understand God’s.
Because a lot of adult Christians can’t grasp this (including myself). We can’t grasp how God could love us, exactly as we are, and not “as we should be because we can never be as good as we should” – as Brennan Manning writes (paraphrase).
If you’re a kid who feels your parents’ approval and love is dependent on behavior, then you’ll probably be an adult Christian who has an awfully fraught relationship with your Father in heaven.
So this is absolutely crucial — especially for the church.
More generally, the United States seems to have a rather odd view of children and mental health, wherein parents either say depression etc. is real but blame screens for the condition, or that it’s not real and just a plot by pharma companies to start medicating kids who are just being kids.
Either way — they tend to deny it could have any basis in what’s the basis for any disease. We are born with mortal bodies. Ones that malfunction. Ones that need medicine and therapy and help when they’re diseased.
And one could argue that treating childhood depression is even more important than addressing adult depression, because a child’s brain is still developing and, as with anything, early treatment is more likely to be successful than waiting until even more damage has been done.
The Christian church is just now (with hesitation) getting around to make its peace with understanding depression as a disease.
But a disease kids could have?
The church isn’t even close to there.
In fact, too often Christian churches create a culture where manifestations of that depression are censured, and thus, the darkness inside goes hidden outside for a long while (in a similar way to how adult depression is hidden in churches. It’s a Christian culture thing).
So this is serious business, and seriously sad, and that headline is one of the saddest things to think of.
I just prayed right now, and I hope you pray now that God will open the minds of Christian leaders and parents, so that we all can recognize the importance of listening to our children, and recognizing that even preschoolers can be depressed, and that God has given us the great honor and responsibility of attending to their needs.
Resources:
Cognition and Emotion: “Pediatric Depression: An Evidence-based Update on Treatment Interventions.”
NHS: “Depression in children and young people.”
CDC: “Anxiety and depression in children.”
Cleveland Clinic: “Depression in children: signs, symptoms and what to do.”
Johns Hopkins: “Childhood Depression.”
Everyday Health: “7 easily missed signs your child might have depression.”
Final note – if you haven’t yet, read my interview with Dr. Terry Powell, who talks of his own childhood depression.
[Photo: Pexels, free stock photography]
